Co-Workers Change Places

Some U.S. businesses are giving employees the chance to complete a stint in a different department or temporarily swap places with a colleague overseas.

Companies have long provided job rotations for higher level executives to give them a sense of how different departments operate, but now they are discovering that short- to medium-term moves for rank-and-file employees help workers sharpen their skills, stay motivated and identify new roles they might aim for in the future. Moreover, they help address a challenge that many companies are facing: how to better foster collaboration across different specialties and regions.

ENLARGE

James Yang

"In organizations today there is more emphasis on adaptability, teamwork and learning agility. Companies have to be flexible about creating opportunities for employees to opt into projects," says Caroline Paxman, president of the Americas for SHL, a talent-measurement firm.

A 2011 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 43% of employers offer cross-training of some kind to help workers develop proficiencies not related to their current jobs.

At Intel Corp.INTC0.14%, employees can find temporary assignments by searching an internal database with hundreds of listings. These assignments allow workers "to test-drive a job or make connections in different departments," says Amreen Madhani, who oversees the program which launched last March.

In 11 months, 1,300 positions lasting a few weeks to a year—in areas like HR, finance, strategy, marketing and product development—have been filled. Slots open up around special projects or as staffers take sabbaticals. Employees apply for the positions and take roles pending approval from their current manager and the hiring manger.

Not that such swaps are friction-free. "I felt like a deer in the headlights" says Elizabeth Wright Korytkowski, a 38-year-old benefits specialist who took a four-month assignment with Intel's software-services group.

Still, the rotation provided Ms. Korytkowski an opportunity to interact directly with employees and gain familiarity with new software and HR tools. Since that assignment, she has received a promotion and completed a second special project outside her usual job duties.

These arrangements are increasingly valuable in retaining a restless work force that is accustomed to fast-paced change and innovation, says John Sullivan, a management professor at San Francisco State University.

At Virgin America, a handful of flight attendants recently traded places with colleagues at Virgin Blue (now Virgin Australia) as part of a one-year exchange. Though the exchange involved only six U.S.-based flight attendants and three from Australia, staff worked for 12 to 18 months, on and off, to get it off the ground.

Was it worth it? "Absolutely," says Frances Fiorillo, senior vice president of people and in-flight services. "It created a lot of excitement and energy" among the airline's 450 or so flight attendants, 10% of whom applied to participate, Ms. Fiorillo says.

Virgin America would like to repeat the swap in the future, but for the moment its resources have been tied up in other initiatives, she adds.

All this movement can come at a price for companies since participants learn on a steep curve at first. Often there is lost productivity and resources.

Generally, skills-based rotations are more valuable than swaps that are purely geographic, says Alec Levenson, a research scientist at the University of Southern California's Center for Effective Organizations. While a program like Virgin's offers employees some short-term benefits, it may have less impact on a company's overall effectiveness, he says.

Still, global exchanges can be a valuable retention tool for multinational companies even when they don't involve a great deal of cross-training.

At PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, managers nominate six junior staffers who have been at the firm for three to six years to participate in a three-month swap between the U.S. and Australia. The program pairs employees with similar job duties so they can ramp up quickly, says Eliza Scherrer, U.S. global mobility leader for PwC.

Participants profit as they broaden their network and explore a new working environment. The firm profits by getting more work done during the respective busy seasons in Australia (July to September) and the U.S. (January to March).

The program also builds morale and takes employees "out of their comfort zone," adds Ms. Scherrer.

Terri Lodwick, president of All American Window, a 22-person home-improvement company in Germantown, Wis., says that the long-running job-swap program at her company paid dividends by improving employee retention, customer service and operations. It also helps ease the potential disruptions during maternity and sick leaves.

At the firm, every employee completes 32 to 40 hours of swaps annually, scheduled in four-hour increments. A receptionist might learn to be an order-taker, while installers and service technicians might cross-train. Employees fill out a questionnaire about what they learned and how the program could be improved.

Workers "get to see how they fit into the entire organization, not just their little cubicle," Ms. Lodwick says.

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